Our Collections
About Our Collections
The USC Pacific Asia Museum’s permanent collection exists thanks to generous donations from collectors and donors throughout Southern California since 1971. Spanning more than 5000 years of history, USC PAM’s collection objects come from East Asia, South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas, and the Pacific Islands and their diasporas. Our use of the collection, through exhibition, loans, and research, is driven by our mission to provide a dialogue rooted in intercultural understanding among communities.
Through its collections, the USC Pacific Asia Museum creates inspiring encounters with the art, history, and culture of Pacific Asia to promote intercultural understanding in the service of elevating our shared sense of humanity.
Visitors to our museum have the opportunity to expand their understanding of one of the most dynamic and diverse parts of the world and simultaneously find connections to their own unique experiences and interests.
With a collection of over 13,000 objects, USC Pacific Asia Museum boasts significant holdings in East Asian paintings, Chinese ceramics and jades, Japanese woodblock prints, Himalayan and Buddhist arts, Pacific Island objects, Orientalist graphic arts, and textiles from across Asia. The museum utilizes its permanent collection to carry out its mission by exploring the regions cultures and histories through the arts.
Highlights of USC Pacific Asia Museum’s permanent collection include East Asian paintings, Chinese ceramics, Japanese woodblock prints, Himalayan and Buddhist arts, Southeast Asian ceramics, Pacific Island objects, graphic arts, and textiles from across Asia. Particularly noteworthy holdings include: Harari Collection of Japanese paintings and drawings from the Edo period (1600-1868); the Lydman and Snukal Collections of Chinese ceramics; the Nancy King collection of Himalayan art; Southeast Asian ceramics from the Collection of Margot and Hans Ries; and the complete prints of Paul Jacoulet.
In recent years, USC Pacific Asia Museum has accepted donations from Tsuruya Kokei, a contemporary Japanese printmaker, of his most recent prints, and objects from the Jim and Jeanne Pieper Collection, highlighting religious and ceremonial arts from China, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia. The Charles T. Townley collection of contemporary Chinese art greatly enhances the representation of contemporary art at USC PAM. Moving forward, our museum is focused on expanding the representation of living artists and voices of the diaspora, enhancing USC PAM’s goal of promoting the breadth and depth of the arts of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Permanent Collection
The USC Pacific Asia Museum’s permanent collection exists thanks to the generous donations of collectors and donors throughout Southern California since 1971. Spanning more than 5000 years of history, USC PAM’s collection objects come from East Asia, South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas, and the Pacific Islands and their diasporas.
Conservation
USC Pacific Asia Museum regularly assesses conservation needs of objects in the permanent collection and raises money through grants, member donations, and exhibition funding for conservation and care. Recent conservation projects include a 19th century Korean screen (2000.38.7ABC), a 17th century Chinese Buddhist scroll painting (2002.24.5), and a Balinese polychrome wood sculpture of Vishnu Riding Garuda (2020.6.24A-D).
Abandoned Property
The USC Pacific Asia Museum conducted its first full inventory of the collection from 2007-2011 and subsequently from 2016-2018. During the inventory, the museum found numerous objects that were found in collection (FIC) with no accession numbers or identification of their immediate owners.
The lack of ownership prevents the museum from using them to serve its mission statement, all the while bearing the costs and responsibilities to care for them including storage, record maintenance, insurance, periodic inventory and general overhead. The Museum hereby wishes to return these objects to the rightful owner or gain proper titles to these objects in order to better use or dispose them.
Deaccession
USC Pacific Asia Museum collects and cares for more than 13,000 objects in its permanent collection, largely built through gifts and bequests from private donors since 1971. With new curatorial priorities and an immediate need to refine the collection and ease crowded storage conditions, we are moving forward with the deaccessioning of objects that do not serve our mission.